Remember, those star destroyers saved the GFFA from the evil Yuuzhan Vong.
People might want to be a bit more grateful.

Just Star Destroyers? That's a big negative Ghost Rider, as the rosters of the fleet were full! You forgot Star Defenders, Mediator-class battle cruisers, Mon Cal cruisers, Republic-class cruisers, Ranger-class gunships, and untold dozens of different classes of cruiser, carrier, frigate, corvette, and every other sort of vessel you can imagine!

The only reason Nazism is more than a footnote in history is BECAUSE it was changed into a xenophobic, nationalistic, hateful régime. It is more than a footnote in history because its leaders killed or exiled all their opponents -- whether on the right or left -- and brainwashed the population. I'm not one for painting with broad brushes, but there is absolutely ZERO room for recognizing the Nazi ideology as anything other than something monstrous and disgraceful.

And moreover, it is beyond dispute that the Empire was based or is at least channeling Nazi Germany in part (among other inspirations: British, Romans, Nixon, etc.): Imperial uniform design is rather WWII German in nature, and of course we have the well-known use of the term "stormtroopers." Moreover, the EU's use of COMPNOR, ISB, and human high culture is an obvious reference to Nazi racism.

It does no good to hide one's head in the sand and pretend otherwise. First: The Nazis are bad and national socialism is not, cannot, and should not be treated as a neutral ideology. Second: the Empire is portrayed, in both movies and EU, as space Nazis.

My argument has always been that the Nazi comparison is incomplete and that the Empire is not some monolith (a view that WEG, which to my knowledge invented COMPNOR and the ISB) and had different ideologies within it. Although to be honest, maybe a comparison to Nazi Germany is apropos: before Hitler murdered all those who disagreed with him, his Nazi party had significant opposition among the old-guard monarchists like von Hindenberg and the like: similarly, COMPNOR had its share of enemies as well.

But just as the Nazis were evil jackbooted thugs, so too were COMPNOR and its lackies. We cannot and shall not pretend otherwise.

Nazism is not bad.
The people who practioned it were bad.
I do think nazism could work.
At least, there would not have been an economical crisis.

Nazism is not bad.
The people who practioned it were bad.
I do think nazism could work.
At least, there would not have been an economical crisis.

Nazism was bad.

The Age of European Imperialism where entire peoples were wiped out, vast poulations were brutalized for profit, and eugenics were seen as the wave of the future is what inspired Nazism (It the part the USA, Britain (and most of its dominions), and all of western Europe loves to forget)

Nazism and its self detructive behavior is European Imperialism's logical conclusion, not and abberation. If not Germany it would have likley cropped up some where else.

First -- Likewater: post hoc ergo propyer hoc. While 19th century colonialist thinking doubtless helped justify Nazi racial theories, it was neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of stuff. Hatred of that sort would exist regardless of whatever is used to rationalize it. It is, by nature, irrational. It is certainly not the natural conclusion of such: the wotkf's foremost colonial power was in steadfast opposition to fascism. Indeed, Germany was a latecomer to that whole game (mostly as it was a latecomer to the family of nations).

Immodet -- my point was that you cannot separate what Nazis did from what their ideology was. Had the Nazi leaders not been crazy warmongering racists, nobody would have ever heard of them. They were at best a minor movement between the rightist monarchists, the centrist republicans, and the leftist socialists. To be really, really tacky about this: their hate made them powerful.

So there's no other way to talk about Nazism except in the way that it manifested itself. It is evil, plain and simple.

Now -- if your argument is that fascism isn't evil and would've done great things, that's different. You CAN talk about a fascist ideology outside if its historical manifestations because its more varied.

However, should you be interested in doing so, I'll happily contest the point too. Fascism is terrible, awful, petty, and mean.

Mussolinis fascism is more debatable here as it was more in line with classic one party dictatorships.

Even then, it is a pretty horrible philosophy, one which openly teaches that war is the only human endeavor that is really worth anything, and that the state's good should come at the expense of the good of its people.

If people can say that Naziism, Fascism, or Legalism are not evil, I wonder what kind of philosophy they would consider evil.

Their counter to the crisis they encountered was so deeply socialist/communist that you can’t pin that on them.

Not to mention they only "solved" the crisis in a very short term and it wasn't long before their horrible economic inefficiency really hampered their war effort.

First -- Likewater: post hoc ergo propyer hoc. While 19th century colonialist thinking doubtless helped justify Nazi racial theories, it was neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of stuff. Hatred of that sort would exist regardless of whatever is used to rationalize it. It is, by nature, irrational. It is certainly not the natural conclusion of such: the wotkf's foremost colonial power was in steadfast opposition to fascism. Indeed, Germany was a latecomer to that whole game (mostly as it was a latecomer to the family of nations).

Post hoc ergo proyer hoc? I don't speak progamer jargon.

Hatreds existance does not garuntee mass proliferation, without colonialism, Nazism if it existed would lack the rational for mass acceptance. White/European
whatever supermicy in the social order, and extreme ethnocentrism was a particular problem of the area. The various European empires were not just minor influences they were seen, by many as examples to be followed.

Ethnocentrism breeds stratification, i bred it in the united states, it bred it in the british empire, it bred it in Australia, It is an ugly part of western sociaty westerners love to deny. Nazi's did not create the one drop rule, They Didn't commit genocide on the Native Americans, They did not originate the racial cast system found throught the americas, They did not originate the various racialist 'sciences' of the day. They simply were inspired by them, they took thoes very ideals to heart and turned them on other Europeans, and on themselves.

Leopold the II Of Belgum did his deeds before nazism was a twinkle in a germans eye.

The only reason Nazism is more than a footnote in history is BECAUSE it was changed into a xenophobic, nationalistic, hateful régime. It is more than a footnote in history because its leaders killed or exiled all their opponents -- whether on the right or left -- and brainwashed the population. I'm not one for painting with broad brushes, but there is absolutely ZERO room for recognizing the Nazi ideology as anything other than something monstrous and disgraceful.

And moreover, it is beyond dispute that the Empire was based or is at least channeling Nazi Germany in part (among other inspirations: British, Romans, Nixon, etc.): Imperial uniform design is rather WWII German in nature, and of course we have the well-known use of the term "stormtroopers." Moreover, the EU's use of COMPNOR, ISB, and human high culture is an obvious reference to Nazi racism.

It does no good to hide one's head in the sand and pretend otherwise. First: The Nazis are bad and national socialism is not, cannot, and should not be treated as a neutral ideology. Second: the Empire is portrayed, in both movies and EU, as space Nazis.

My argument has always been that the Nazi comparison is incomplete and that the Empire is not some monolith (a view that WEG, which to my knowledge invented COMPNOR and the ISB) and had different ideologies within it. Although to be honest, maybe a comparison to Nazi Germany is apropos: before Hitler murdered all those who disagreed with him, his Nazi party had significant opposition among the old-guard monarchists like von Hindenberg and the like: similarly, COMPNOR had its share of enemies as well.

But just as the Nazis were evil jackbooted thugs, so too were COMPNOR and its lackies. We cannot and shall not pretend otherwise.

Nazism is not bad.
The people who practioned it were bad.
I do think nazism could work.
At least, there would not have been an economical crisis.

One has to wonder about the purity of an ideology that attracts only those who believed in genocide, a pure race, and all assortment ideas and action that can only be described as evil. It is one thing when you get a couple bad eggs in a basket, but when all you have is bad eggs in one basket, well, you better start trying to pay attention to the things they have in common.

Likewater: I'm not sure what "progamer jargon" is. What was Latin, with a kindly typo contributed courtesy of my phone. It means "after this, therefore because of this."

You've started changing your argument. Suddenly it's about ethnocentrism rather than colonialism. D'ya think that colonialism created ethnocentrism? It would've been there regardless. It allowed colonial powers, particularly the more brutal Continental ones, to justify their depredations but it was not the natural outgrowth of such. Since you brought up the United States, you should be aware that the anti-imperialist movement in the US was extremely racist in nature. Their cartoons about Filipinos and Cubans in particular are horrific.

The thing you need to understand is that EVERYONE was racist. You think colonialism primed the pump? I'd argue that a smaller world did that, when people had to justify why the "Other" wasn't allowed to participate in society the way that they were.

In fact, it's arguable that in the general soup of racism that was the 19th and early 20th centuries, British imperialists -- racists most of them surely were -- were better towards minorities than the Bolsheviks. Modern European socialists, opposed as ever to imperialism, tend to be rather racist too (I've seen a few posting in the Senate!). Caricaturing opposing ideologies ignores the nuance that supposedly egalitarian ideologies were pretty exclusionary themselves.

Most people were racist back then. Nobody comes out looking good.

Edit: as for stratification and racism being a western creation, have you ever read... well, anything, about traditional Chinese, Japanese, or Indian society (just to name a few examples).

Mussolinis fascism is more debatable here as it was more in line with classic one party dictatorships.

Even then, it is a pretty horrible philosophy, one which openly teaches that war is the only human endeavor that is really worth anything, and that the state's good should come at the expense of the good of its people.

If people can say that Naziism, Fascism, or Legalism are not evil, I wonder what kind of philosophy they would consider evil..

Likewater: I'm not sure what "progamer jargon" is. What was Latin, with a kindly typo contributed courtesy of my phone. It means "after this, therefore because of this."

You've started changing your argument. Suddenly it's about ethnocentrism rather than colonialism. D'ya think that colonialism created ethnocentrism? It would've been there regardless. It allowed colonial powers, particularly the more brutal Continental ones, to justify their depredations but it was not the natural outgrowth of such. Since you brought up the United States, you should be aware that the anti-imperialist movement in the US was extremely racist in nature. Their cartoons about Filipinos and Cubans in particular are horrific.

The thing you need to understand is that EVERYONE was racist. You think colonialism primed the pump? I'd argue that a smaller world did that, when people had to justify why the "Other" wasn't allowed to participate in society the way that they were.

In fact, it's arguable that in the general soup of racism that was the 19th and early 20th centuries, British imperialists -- racists most of them surely were -- were better towards minorities than the Bolsheviks. Modern European socialists, opposed as ever to imperialism, tend to be rather racist too (I've seen a few posting in the Senate!). Caricaturing opposing ideologies ignores the nuance that supposedly egalitarian ideologies were pretty exclusionary themselves.

Most people were racist back then. Nobody comes out looking good.

Edit: as for stratification and racism being a western creation, have you ever read... well, anything, about traditional Chinese, Japanese, or Indian society (just to name a few examples).

1) I have not changed my argument. western eurocentrism, regularly with wonton abandon destroyed other cultures for profit. It has rationalised it, tried to escuse it, and some times even attapted to self correct it useally after the deaths of millions. And the Nazi's are a part of that culture and that legacy it is everything ugly about western culture rolled into of potent example. And if it wasnt the germans it would have occured elsewhere. Most likey by the Americans or the British who have commited Genocide.

2) Everyone is not racist, This raises my heckles at western apologists.

Racist? Nope, that paticular gem is a product of Western sociaty. Pointing out other sociaties flaws, dose not negate western sociaties flaws ,just as one pointing out his neighbors flaws does not negate his owns. Has Racism poped up in other countries independent of the West? occasionaly did it become a culture wide phenomenon? nope. Was it due to some inherant goodness in other cultures? No. It's just pretty hard to say your people are superior after reciving a savage @&$ beating by the guys next door.Someone always got their backsides handed to them. Since Europeian Western sociaty never got its head handed to it by another regions people in 500 or so years racism became a culture wide phenomenon for a good chunk of it dominance.

The very fact that you can only point to another western/ european philsophy espoused by an Autocratic european government pretty much showed the wanton distruction, and philisophal focus by the western Eurocenteric to the rest of the world.

Mussolinis fascism is more debatable here as it was more in line with classic one party dictatorships.

Even then, it is a pretty horrible philosophy, one which openly teaches that war is the only human endeavor that is really worth anything, and that the state's good should come at the expense of the good of its people.

If people can say that Naziism, Fascism, or Legalism are not evil, I wonder what kind of philosophy they would consider evil..

Legalism?

An ancient Chinese philosophy. Basically, the power of the state is the only thing that matters, and everything that threatens that is evil. That includes thin like family ties, compassion, and happiness. It argued that war should be waged often, just to make sure that people are too busy fighting to care about distractions like making money or taking care of the elderly. I will let Lord Shang, one of its greatest advocates, speak for himself here:

Sophistry and cleverness are an aid to lawlessness; rites and music are symptoms of dissipations and licence; kindness and benevolence are the foster‑mother of transgressions; employment and promotion are opportunities for the rapacity of the wicked. If lawlessness is aided, it becomes current; if there are symptoms of dissipation and licence, they will become the practice; if there is a foster‑mother for transgressions, they will arise; if there are opportunities for the rapacity of the wicked, they will never cease. If these eight things come together, the people will be stronger than the government; but if these eight things are non‑existent in a state, the government will be stronger than the people. If the people are stronger than the government, the state is weak; if the government is stronger than the people, the army is strong. For if these eight things exist, the ruler has no one to use for defence and war, with the result that the state will be dismembered and will come to ruin; but if there are not these eight things, the ruler has the wherewithal for defence and war, with the result that the state will flourish and attain supremacy.

It sounds like a ridiculous strawman of a philosophy, but it was actually the dominate philosophy in the earliest parts of Chinese history before being displaced by its ancient rivals Confucianism and Daoism, and even then its influence never entirely vanished.

Has Racism poped up in other countries independent of the West? occasionaly did it become a culture wide phenomenon? nope.

Wait what? Racism is not some unique Western trait. Ethnocentric tendencies are found across human cultural and geneological groupings. Now the 'racist' tendencies of rennaissance and onward Western civilization tend to be somewhat more visually obvious than those of say, historic Chinese cultures, because of the legacy of globe-trotting exploration, but it's the same principle and often the very same arguements.

Likewater: Er, alright. You seem to be conflating a lot of issues there. I still have trouble with the argument that Nazism was the natural outgrowth of colonialism when the primary colonial powers were the enemies of the Nazis, and were the same powers which set up the whole idea of international criminal jurisdiction over such crimes but nevermind that.

If you think racism is uniquely Western, just look at what the Japanese have done to Korea. Look at what the Han have done to cultural minorities (and speaking of ethnocentrism, consider what the term "Middle Kingdom" means). Look at the Indian caste system, with its "untouchables" (who are largely Dravidian).

I don't know how else to respond to such a knee-jerk post, such crude stereotyping, and blatant whitewashing of non-western cultures.

The fact is, people were awful in the past. That's just the way things were. Arguing that Nazism is necessarily the logical conclusion of western culture is borderline racism in itself -- d'ya think that fascist Japan was a necessary result of their culture too? Or is it just the west that's the target of your smears?

Determinist views of history are lazy. Moreover, they absolve people of the actual responsibility they have for their own actions. Western culture didn't lead to Nazism: the willingness of a populace to enable a brutal tyrant and their enthusiastic participation in his crimes is more to blame, especially as his victims were largely fellow Europeans. Hitler didn't run down to Africa or Asia, he killed Germans and Poles and Czechs. He killed people of the Jewish faith who might have been European for centuries. False science and social Darwinism may have justified it to intellectuals and made them feel better, but the average person who went along with those crimes probably didn't care too much what science had to say about people's "inferiority" -- they bought into it because it was easy.

By saying that Nazism was the outgrowth of western culture, you are absolving Hitler and the Nazis of blame for their actions. You are saying they are merely the final step in an inevitable process. Indeed, you argue that others would have done it if not them.

Their counter to the crisis they encountered was so deeply socialist/communist that you can’t pin that on them.

I can give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're using "socialist" in the specific sense in which the Nazis used it to refer to their unique fascist-inspired hodge-podge of an ill-defined authoritarian economic system (while they vehemently and specifically rejected the Marxist understanding of the term which we default to today), but to suggest that the Nazis were at all communist in any way pretty much just betrays a great amount of confusion of terminology on your part. The Nazis sent Marxists and communists to labor camps, they didn't ape their ideas.

They weren't big fans of naked capitalism, either, mind you, but I just wanted to set the record straight lest you become one of those people gallivanting about on Facebook gleefully italicizing the latter half of the term "National Socialism" during a heated political back-and-forth sparked by a photo of a kitten playing with a dust bunny.